Forest Hills Man Charged With Anti-Asian Hate Crime: NYPD

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — The man accused of harassing an Asian man about the coronavirus last week in Forest Hills was arrested and charged with a hate crime, police said Saturday.

The NYPD charged Raul Ramos, 44, with aggravated harassment as a hate crime for the anti-Asian attack early Thursday on a man bringing his 10-year-old son to school.

Ramos, a Forest Hills resident, has no prior arrests, a police spokesperson told Patch.

In an interview with Patch, the victim — who asked to be identified only by his first name, Jeff, to protect his family — said he was walking his son to a school bus stop in Forest Hills when the man shouted, "Where's your f---ing mask, you Chinese b---h?" and tried to hit him in the head.

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Jeff and his son kept walking, but the man chased after them, he recalled.

"I tried not to do anything like yelling back at him because my son was there," he told Patch in a phone interview last week.

Initially, he didn't file a police report because he wasn't sure police would be helpful, he told Patch on Thursday. He later reported the incident to police, he said after Patch first reported on the incident.

Though data shows a decline in hate crimes as of March 1, the NYPD has investigated several recent incidents of anti-Asian harassment and attacks as misinformation about COVID-19, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, fuels racism and xenophobia against Chinese and other Asian communities.